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The Minnesota State Fair has plenty to see, eat, and do — and if you go this year, you’ll have the chance to contribute to scientific research that’s ongoing at The Hormel Institute thanks to a $5,000 grant from the Masonic Cancer Center (MCC) that has been awarded to Annie Lin, PhD, assistant professor at the Institute, University of Minnesota.

The grant will support the development and implementation of a study that will take place in the Driven to Discover (D2D) building at this year’s state fair, where visitors can help guide the development of an inclusive, personalized health and nutrition app called CrunchFeed.

“There is a popular concept that weight gain is caused by more calories in than calories out. While this formula has been used by many commercial mobile health apps, the saying is oversimplified and ignores the essential nutrients found in food,” Lin said. “The concept also fails to consider that diet change is a personal journey. We have different biological, environmental, and cultural influences on how we access and respond to food.”

The ENACT (Electronic Nutrition Approaches for Cancer-related Topics) lab, led by Lin, is working to fill this health app gap. There will be the opportunity to take a survey on-site in the D2D building or after the fair to help the research team incorporate personal factors into the app, as well as the chance to weigh in on app design mock-ups.

This research will be the first step toward understanding how the team can personalize the app, with the ultimate goal being the creation of a publicly available mobile app that is useful for users across a variety of Minnesotan communities, as well as for clinicians providing nutrition education.

“Research shows that receiving nutrition education predicts higher quality diets. Yet about 80% of U.S. adults do not recognize MyPlate, the official symbol of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines [which replaced the Food Guide Pyramid in 2011]. We feel that effective communication and access to personalized nutrition tools will, in part, provide a roadmap to engaging in health-promoting behaviors,” Lin said. “We also want to emphasize in this research that there are many personal factors that influence diet behavior and weight change. Current tools should account for these factors, rather than subscribe to the belief that weight changes are due to ‘willpower.’”

In collaboration with Drs. David Guinovart (The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota) and Joanne Slavin (University of Minnesota), the research team will use advanced computational tools to sift through data. Dr. Sharon Baik of the City of Hope also brings her expertise in developing digital health tools to reduce cancer health disparities in underserved communities to the project.

CrunchFeed will use a gold-standard food and nutrient database developed by the Nutrition Coordinating Center, University of Minnesota, so users can more easily focus on diet quality using tools tailored to their individual needs and preferences.